DeltaWing Takes Flight

Turbocharged Nissan 4-cylinder powers wild-looking race car.

In London today, the collaborative effort between Don Panoz, Highcroft Racing, Ganassi Racing and Dan Gurney's All American Racers to field the radical DeltaWing car at Le Mans gained a key player—Nissan.

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A race-prepared 1.6-liter 4-cylinder Nissan engine, featuring direct injection and a turbocharger, will power the DeltaWing, which has half the weight and half the aerodynamic drag of a conventional racer. The engine is expected to produce around 300 bhp, sufficient to give the DeltaWing lap times between LMP1 and LMP2 machines at Le Mans, despite having only half the power of those conventional prototypes.

The DeltaWing in action.

"As motor racing rulebooks have become tighter over time, racing cars look more and more similar and the technology used has had less and less relevance to road car development. Nissan DeltaWing aims to change that and we were an obvious choice to become part of the project," said Andy Palmer, Executive Vice President, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.

The DeltaWing rolling under power for the first time.

The Background.

Two weeks prior to this historic announcement, at Buttonwillow Raceway Park in California, the DeltaWing first took to the track. I was there as an embedded reporter for that historic first shakedown/test.

Here's my take: In the me-too, look-alike, spec-series era into which motor racing has degenerated, Ben Bowlby's DeltaWing concept is a bold departure. Visually spectacular—shouldn't Craig Breedlove be standing next to the thing?—and packed with innovative thinking, the DeltaWing proved just too radical to be considered by Indycar for open-wheel racing when offered by Chip Ganassi.

The DeltaWing in action.

No problem for Bowlby, 45, who quickly pivoted and transformed the DeltaWing into a sports racing prototype and gained the interest of Don Panoz, Duncan Dayton's Highcroft Racing and Dan Gurney, one who certainly knows something about out-of-the-box thinking and building race cars. Granted a special invitation from the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, organizers of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Bowlby and AAR amazingly went from paper to race car in one seven-days-a-week, seven-month-long thrash. Then it was show-and-tell time. Would it all work?

To the Track, Finally.

Buttonwillow, February 29, 2012: You wouldn't blame them for being rattled or on edge. They were already a day late, having missed the whole first test day—the only one where the track was exclusively theirs—because a supplier failed to deliver critical steering parts. But you wouldn't know it that morning. No panic, no drama.

The DeltaWing is lowered from the AAR transporter.

Bowlby's AAR lads, the Brit engine guys from Ray Mallock (where the prototype 4-cylinder turbocharged Nissan engine was built), the Highcroft crew members, the Michelin people—all just went about their business quietly and in good cheer, like they'd done it thousands of times before—just not together, and on this car that had never turned a wheel.

At 8:15 a.m., the DeltaWing, sinister, almost Lockheed SR-71-like in carbon-fiber black, was lowered from the AAR transporter and pushed into the garage and immediately hooked up to life support laptops from every contingent.

Seats have been poured for three drivers, two-time Rolex Daytona Prototype Champion Alex Gurney, Highcroft's Marino Franchitti, and seven-time Le Mans veteran and former F1 driver Erik Comas. There's some talk that it's risky having three drivers in early testing, as they may want to compete rather than gather data.

Final test prep.

Gurney, AAR's chief test driver and director of marketing, will be first out. Bowlby gently reminds him of what's needed—which is not speed. He'll have to be careful with shifting, as a problem has surfaced in the electronics that control the engine cut and blip on upshifts and downshifts.

Showtime.

At 11:56 a.m., Gurney is pushed off. The DeltaWing is rolling under power for the first time, but Gurney makes a slow loop around the pit garages first for an initial systems test, then stops long enough to quip, "Well, it turns." Then he heads out onto the track. Ben Bowlby's three-year dream is finally real.

DeltaWing controls.

The runs are short and low speed at first, but gradually, Gurney ups the tempo, and other than balky gear changes that will continue through the day—that gearbox/engine electronics issue—and slightly heavy steering, remarkably, there are no problems. What's more, the car seems to change direction very well and is visibly stable. There are smiles all around, particularly from Bowlby, Dan Gurney and Duncan Dayton. It works!

Later, Erik Comas is permitted to push a bit more and it's obvious that the car is flat and fast through the esses and high-speed corners. As Alex Gurney had reported, there is absolutely no lean and the car doesn't take a set—it just turns. The only place it's slow is approaching the hairpin right in front of the pits, understandable, as the drivers are unable to be aggressive with braking and count on their downshifts.

Gurney, AAR's chief test driver.

"This is a real race car," says a delighted Comas afterward. "And we haven't even gotten close to its potential. There's much more to come."

Asked if it's strange to drive with those two 4-in.-wide tires so close together at the front, the French veteran tells us, "If I had a blindfold on, I would never know that it wasn't a normal front end. It feels absolutely the same."

He's equally enthusiastic about the stability under braking with the decidedly unconventional system provided by Performance Friction. Not only was it half the weight (29.2 lb. total for all four corners), but the majority of braking would be done with the rear tires.

"No one has ever done anything like this," said Darrick Dong, who oversaw the unique brake package and was nearly giddy after debriefing Comas.

"Comas said there was no instability in the braking. In the 38 years I've been in the business, I don't think I've ever had a driver say there's no instability in the braking."

Late in the day, Marino Franchitti gets in and despite the annoying shift problem, he's permitted to open the tap even more and is now clocking more than 150 mph on the relatively short straight. What's more, in one fairly slow corner, at 50 mph, the Deltawing is pulling 1.5g of side load.

Final test prep.

"F***k me, it turns!" says the exuberant Scotsman back in the garage.

There will be one more day of testing and even more speed, but there's a sense that we've all witnessed history, the birth of a whole new kind of race car. One that many pundits claimed would never work. Ben Bowlby is anything but fist-pumping demonstrative, but even he cannot help but smile while candidly summing up the test.

"Well, what went right was, I have to say that there weren't many surprises. We haven't made any glaring errors in the concept, the weight distribution, the tire design, which was Michelin's department, the total mass of the project, and the capacity of the brake rotors, front to rear. The basic layout and the systems all worked pretty well out of the box.

"However, we had a largely electronics issue between the control of the gearbox, between the engine and the gearbox. We destroyed one gearbox and were partly on the way to destroying the other one.

The DeltaWing in action.

"To be honest, that was not unexpected. We had three weeks scheduled to test the gearbox, but we didn't have the manpower and resources to fund that. We knew that, and decided to take a flier and come to the track to take advantage of what was left of our test days. What went right was that we were able to salvage an indication of performance. And it shows that the concept will do what we thought. Had the gearbox and engine talked properly, I think it would so far have been a flawless test, remarkably."

What's ahead for the DeltaWing is another thrash to iron out the gearbox issues and fit the race-spec sidepods and light system, all to be seen on demonstration laps at Sebring. And then it's on to Le Mans Test Day, where what may well be a new paradigm in motor racing will be introduced on the world stage.

In other DeltaWing news, two drivers have been confirmed: Marino Franchitti and Nissan's reigning FIA GT1 World Champion Michael Krumm. Also, look for the Nissan-powered DeltaWing to make some public demonstration laps at Sebring, on Thursday, March 15, at 12:30 p.m. EST.

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